I am slowly starting to feel better.  I threw up for what I hope is the last time just after 6am.  Yuck.

On Thursday I get the very clear directive to go on this pilgrimage, and by Saturday night I am flat out, throwing up, and feeling miserable.  It was all centered in my stomach.  What can I or am not willing to stomach?  And, as my friend, Sharon, pointed out on the phone this morning, stomach is the seat of action.  Where am I out of right relationship with action?  What actions have I been taking - or not taking - that are not aligned with my higher purpose and intentions?

I felt fine all day Friday and Saturday, physically anyway.  On Saturday morning, I talked with my wise friend, Ingrid, who also was a major catalyst in my going on the journey to reconnect with my taproot.  She played the catalyst role very powerfully again on Saturday morning.  When I shared with her what I was up to with this journey with Money, she challenged me.  Threw the gauntlet down and upset my neat package.

Gulp.  

Interesting that I just used the word "gulp."  A very descriptive word that uses the digestive system to swallow, and here I've been - throwing up everything I had swallowed and could not stomach.

There is most certainly truth to what Ingrid shared with me.  By the way, Ingrid has my permission to speak so directly to me, and what I typed here is the synopsis of our much longer conversation.  I trust her implicitly and know that she deeply loves and cares for me.  It is out of this trust and love that she knows she can cut through the chaff and go straight to the heart of the matter.  I just saw a great quote on Facebook:

What Ingrid said to me touched something very deep and repressed in me.  

I do not remember giving myself permission to be myself since I was a very young girl.  I quickly developed habits to look outside of myself to know what I wanted, what I should wear, how I should act, what I should do.  Somehow, I told myself it was not okay, I was not okay, to be truthful about my dreams, desires and feelings, and I developed a finely tuned, externally based system to figure out how I should look, act, feel and think.   I believe I said this somewhere before in my blog, but I gave away my connection to my core so that I would be loved, so that I could and would belong to my parent, my family, my friends, my peers, and now again, my immediate family.  I have a very strong will and have used it to make sure that I always do the "right" thing, or at least just enough of it to get by.

Truth is, I am terrified by what I want, what I long for, and who I am.  I am terrified because I have made up a very convincing story that if I honor who I am, be myself, be truthful about what I want, that I will be all alone, and nobody will love me or include me.  I will not belong anywhere or with anyone.  I will be all alone.  

So, to belong and to be loved, I have been willing to not be truthful with myself and to be my authentic self.  

And instead of taking responsibility for this, I have always found someone, or something else to blame - my mother, my upbringing, my environments, and yes, Money.

I have used Money as my scapegoat, bully and saboteur rather than confront this truth that was lovingly and directly reflected to me this past Saturday.  

I would rather have been "poor me" and the victim than take responsibility for my lies and deceit, and become the heroine of my own journey and my life.

Big deep breath.

Yuck.  As I write that, it feels like what I have been throwing up for the past 36 hours.  YUCK.

So what if what I have been projecting onto Money is actually the aspects of me that are the bully and the tormentor?

What if I take those words I wrote the other day and retrieve them, and own them for myself?

I feel like throwing up again.  My stomach hurts.  My throat is choking.  I feel sick to my stomach.  

So this is what I do…every time I have a desire, thought of my own - I judge it, and myself, very harshly. And I say these mean and horrible things to myself, and then I take that desire and put it through my "outer acceptability filter"  and rework and morph my desire until it becomes acceptable, until I become acceptable, and know that I will belong.

I am my own saboteur and bully.  And, I have projected all of this meanness, bullying, unlovingness onto Money, and made him wrong, bad, uncaring, unloving, and so of course, have not wanted it really.  Made just enough to still play victim, "poor me", I can't do what I really want, I'm stuck, I'm unsuccessful, I'm worthless, I am not enough.

And Money has accepted this, and allowed me to project all of this negativity onto him.  Because Money is Love.  Money was willing to play any role that I chose to project onto him, because ultimately, he - it - knew that I would recognize that despite all my best efforts to make him the bad guy, that he was always here for me, patiently waiting for me to take ownership of what I do to myself, so that he could show up in his essence and in his truth.  This is the ultimate of being in service, isn't it?  That we are willing to play the dark and maligned roles in someone's life so that they can actually come back full circle into the truth of love.  Because the truth always is Love.  

Over the weekend, as I was being with all that Ingrid and I had talked about, I wondered about the possibility of the words I had "heard" from Money and the condescending and unloving tone that I had imagined him to use.  What if I had turned and manipulated the tone of this voice to fit my story about being excluded, unloved and not belonging?  What if he actually said those same words but with a loving tone?  What if it was his way of reminding me that I am not here to belong to anyone else but myself?  I am going to take those same words and interject them with other words that I may have cut out with my own internal editing.  What if he was actually trying to tell me exactly the opposite of what I heard?

Because Money is Love. 

In Barbara Wilder's words from her book, Money is Love, 

I mentioned the work Financial Alchemy™ in a previous blog.  Financial Alchemy is a coaching process that has you get very clear about your relationship with money through personifying "who" money is for you, and to give you the opportunity to create a new relationship.  In my experience, the shortfall of this process is that once we identify our "Money Monster", we are told to just get rid of our it/him/her through breaking up with or firing him, and that just never worked for me.  The habitual monster bully just kept coming back into the picture, and reluctantly, that's who I've been in relationship with, despite all the inner work, the workshops, and positive affirmations.   That's like telling someone to breakup with an abusive partner and to now, just like that, get into relationship with someone who's truly loving and respectful without the inner work to make the changes.   Also, it missed the deeper piece of recognition and compassion that this negative being has actually served a very great purpose.  In my more enlightened moments, I can recognize that the even most challenging people or presences in my life are actually there to serve me and my spiritual and emotional growth and transformation.  Without them, I would have no grist for the mill, nothing to work with or push against.  In this instance, Money has deeply served me by allowing me to project the saboteur and bully onto him, knowing that ultimately, I would take responsibility and own these feelings and projections.  This then allows for the possibility for me to fully accept, and love myself.  Without Money, I wouldn't have some "one" to help me to recognize the beliefs, patterns and behaviors.  I actually feel much gratitude and compassion for money in its willingness to carry all of our fears, angers and greed.  What an enormous gift and generous role it has played for all of us for all of these thousands of years.  

In the work I have done in Financial Alchemy™, I created a new Money that resonated with my core and my purpose.  He is Green Man, the timeless archetype of the wild man who lives in the natural green and wooded world.  He is fully masculine, embodied, sensual and passionate.  He loves unconditionally and he is very rooted in the natural world, trusting in the abundance and beauty of Nature.   Trouble is, I have kept him at arms' length and have been unable to fully relate to him for these past five years.  I have known that he is there, waiting patiently for me to come around to the truth of who he is, rather that always relating to him as the monster perpetrator villain in my "woe is me" life story.  Even more, he is patiently waiting for me to come to the truth of WHO I AM.  I now feel ready to invite Green Man to walk with me.  

Green Man is the embodiment and expression of money that I want to walk with and journey with.  He is my mirror and my guide.  He is the bridge for me between the spiritual and material worlds.  He is who I walk with on this journey of coming to fully love and accept myself.  So why don't I just walk by myself, with my essence?  

If this journey is really about me and my self-worth, self-expression and self-esteem, why am I walking with Money?  

Because for whatever reasons, Money is the direct reflection of my willingness and capacity to love and accept myself, and to create my life from within, nourished by my gifts, dreams and desires, guided by my soul's purpose and path.  I am here to contribute and serve, and my willingness to step over the stile and fully onto my soul's path of contribution is the key to unlock the blocks and fears that stop the flow of financial prosperity.  As I allow myself to receive my Self, Money as Green Man shows up to guide me, call me forth, and support me to shine my brightest light.  

Today is St. Mary Magdalene's Feast Day - July 22nd.  And I am clear that I will not waste what I initiated and received from this journey I have walked by myself on the Mary Michael Pilgrims Way. Mary and St. Michael are within my heart, guiding, providing and protecting every step of the way - even now as I am home in the US, with my family and re-entering to integrate and receive all from my experience.  Today, I read a quote from a group that experienced St. Michael up on Brentor, which is on the Mary Michael Way in Dorset.  The quote from the Bible that was opened to this page at the St. Michael Church that day gave them a message about the following:

Just as St. Michael guides, provides and protects me along the path bearing his name, so too does Green Man.  Perhaps somehow they are connected and are reflections of each other.  More on that another time.  I trust him and know him to always reflect the truth to me.  As we journey together, we heal each other and serve to reconnect the material to the divine, and also the divine to the material, and to shine our lights brightly and boldly, and be the bridges to create Heaven on Earth.

Matter matters, the divine matters. It is all the same thing, just different sides of the same coin, after all.

Solvitur Ambulando!

Yesterday was the aligning of myself fully with my intention and decision to go on this journey with Money.  Crazy eh?  To go on this journey with one's nemesis, captor and bully.  Yet, that is why this is so imperative.  I am committed that through this journey together, that I will come to experience Money for what it really is, and through Love dissolve the negative energies that have become attached to money - not just by me, but also by a collusion and agreement throughout societies and cultures around the world.  Where do you know that money is experienced as love, support, kindness, creative, expansive, an energy that wants to partner and co-create?  Sounds crazy to want to put these qualities on money, right?  Yet this is what I intend from the pilgrimage with money.

To start out my daily pilgrimage, I am going to spend 20 minutes just writing about "What does money mean to me?"  I am going to write with a pen in a notebook and allow myself to just write non-stop about whatever comes up as I answer this question.  This is where I am going to let the gunk out - all the stuff that lies below the surface, below the positive affirmations, below what I want to experience with money. It is what needs to come up to be revealed and released.  It is actually the stuff that has been driving my relationship and experience with money.  It's the stuff that I have tried to deny, heal, pretend is not there and get involved with the next project, business, venture, only to have it come right back to this stuff.  The unconscious, somewhat conscious feelings and beliefs that I hold and honestly, really believe, about money.  This will not all get included here in the blog, but will help to clear the lines so that I can write here!

Then I am going to practice some meditations and clearing exercises to release and clear the stuff that comes up.

Say a prayer to come into right relationship with money and to experience that Money is Love.

Practice "shringing" 108 times and also other practices to call in the energies of abundance and prosperity.  I learned about shringing, and some of these other practices from Barbara Wilder's book, Money is Love, and she describes it as "an ancient mantra to the Hindu Goddess, Lakshmi.  As the embodiment of abundance, Lakshmi represents all the Mother Earth has to offer."  I actually have a mala bead necklace with 108 mala beads from a dear friend, Karyn, who owns Bali Mala, www.wearpeace.com.

I am not especially connected with the Hindu gods and goddesses except for Lakshmi so I am happy to call her in through shringing.  I am also open to other suggestions for calling in other deities from other faiths and cultures, especially associated with the British Isles and northern Europe.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

And then write here.  The writing will be where I am baring all to myself about my daily experiences, challenges, breakthroughs, awarenesses, triggers - this will be the heart and soul of my journey with money.  I can feel very alone and often very ashamed in my relationship with money and wonder, actually berate myself as a 54-year old woman who still does not have it together around money.  Yet, in my more open moments, I know that I cannot be the only one.  Too many people around the globe struggle with money, making ends meet, being stuck in jobs that they tolerate or actually do not even enjoy, putting on hold their real dreams until that day when they have enough money or time or both, and being actually bound in their relationship with money.  So, I am taking this journey not only for myself, but for all people who want to be free of the shame, worry, and feeling hostage to money, and live a life of freedom, abundance, prosperity, creativity, authenticity, expansion and joy!

That said, I realize as I step out onto the path with money, that I experience money as a bully and even more, like a kidnapper.  It is a masculine energy, that looks down at me, with his finger pointing at me, and with a  very condescending voice tells me that "You will never be one of us.  No matter how much money you have, you will never belong.  Ha!  You will never be enough, have enough, know enough.  Who do you think you are?"  

Intense, right?  Yet somehow, out of my experience of growing up in the wealthiest area of Cincinnati, Ohio, that is the essence of the experience I grew up with.  We lived in a very small rented house in the middle of Indian Hill, a very wealthy area where most people did not have less than an acre of land.  Our house, while small and with only one bathroom, was in the middle of 16 acres with the most beautiful barn in the world, an old orchard, a dilapidated greenhouse, a stream, and also a 26-room mansion on the other side of the driveway.  Wow.  I had the perfect playground right outside my door!  Yet, somehow in the midst of all this, I got that I wasn't one of them, wasn't good enough and never would be.  Truthfully, I wouldn't want to be "one of them" - not if this is how they see and treat other human beings, yet what I took away from this is that I would never belong - there or anywhere.  

I became consciously aware of my experience of money as a mean bully about 5 years ago, and I have worked with this, and done much inner work to release, clear, "break up with" this horrible Money Monster that I hold in my mind and belief system. I worked with the concept of money as a person through a system called Financial Alchemy and even became a certified Financial Alchemy coach back in 2008.  So while I have gotten away from it at times, I feel as though I have been on a rope that only lets me go so far, and then I am yanked back into this nasty, abusive relationship all over again.  I have felt hostage and prisoner to this dynamic.  At times, I can feel so hopeless and despairing and I just want to give up, and go live in a hole, and give up, give away all of my creativity and ideas for what I want to do with my life and how I want to use my gifts.

[To be totally transparent here, I want you to know that I am  married, and I do have a husband who makes good money and enough to support our family of four children.  I am so grateful and blessed to be in this situation.  Thank you, Steve.  Yet, while this does provide me with being taken care of financially, it does not give me the empowerment I deeply want to experience within myself.  I am totally dependent on my husband for my financial support and stability. A blessing, yes, most definitely.  And now it is time, as my children grow up, for me to become a sustainable income earner in my own right, as my own right.  I deeply desire to experience financial empowerment and freedom from within and without.  I want the experience of financial abundance and prosperity in my life and work, in full contribution of my gifts and service.]

What triggered this pilgrimage is that last week, Steve and I were meeting with our financial coach and advisor.  It was our first meeting after my return from walking and being in England for a month.  I had paid for much of this trip out of my own earnings, but there was about $1000 debt on the credit card for my portion of my airplane ticket, bed and breakfast's, car rental, petrol, train travel, etc. I had paid off other portions of the expenses, knew exactly what I owed and for what, and so had rationalized these extra expenses, and was feeling quite good about the whole thing.  Then, I was confronted by exactly how I was going to pay it off, and then to add to the challenge I was already feeling, it was suggested (again) that I check out "Underearners Anonymous" and use some of the tools that they offer.  What I heard and experienced in that moment was that "You're not good enough.  You do not earn enough.  You are incapable of earning enough. You have great ideas, but no follow through.  We can't count on you.  You are out of integrity. You're worthless.  You will never earn enough, be enough, have enough."

I left that meeting in shock, and hurt and anger.  I was totally triggered.  I didn't speak to Steve - or anyone for that matter, for three days.  I pulled way in to myself, isolated myself, devised my escape plans.  Thank god I took a walk, and pulled weeds in my garden.  I also attended an in-person UA (Underearners Anonymous) meeting in Denver that afternoon. I drove down without telling anyone where I was going or what I was doing.  I was so humiliated, ashamed, hurt, and angry.  I also attended a phone session on the Saturday night when I was home alone, because of course I cancelled all my plans to join anyone to do anything.  I was in it - the hurt, pain, shame, blame - full on.  Yet, somehow, even in the midst of this, I did attend these meetings, I did take a walk and I did spend time in the garden.  

I slowly started to speak with Steve again on Monday, letting little bits out about attending these meetings.  I picked up and read Barbara Wilder's Money is Love. I got to teach Nordic Pole Walking on Tuesday morning, working with these amazing seniors, teaching them how to use the sticks and getting to witness them bring walking back into their lives.  I loved it.  I had a moment to get out of myself and step into contribution and joy.  

Out of all this, I realized that I have been trying to figure out how to live without money…really.  I so hate how money makes me feel about myself, and my life, and what I am capable and not capable of.  I feel like such a worthless victim.  That's weird - as I typed worthless, I mistyped and wore came out and I read it as "whore".  Is that it?  Do I feel like a whore around money?  Carolyn Myss says that we all have the "prosititute" as one of our core inner archetypes.  Have I been unwilling to connect with her and explore who she is and what her price is?  Hmmm.  A topic for another day on the Journey with Money.

So rather than explore this, or rise up to Money, and become empowered, I had been putting all of my energy into how to get rid of it.  How could we/I live without money so that this didn't have to be an issue and a challenge in my life?  I was putting so much energy into living without money - whether through ascension, wishful thinking, whatever, that it was taking me away from being here, in the third dimension.  I was back to hovering.  I wasn't able to fully engage here, on this Earth plane, with my family and other people I love, doing the work that I love.  

What if there was another option?  Especially given that it would be like moving a whole mountain range by myself to get rid of money.  What if there was another possibility that I hadn't considered?

And then I read Money is Love.

In reading Money is Love, I realized that like me, Money has been cut off from its roots.  It has lost its connection to who and what it truly is and its spiritual roots, and has become a monster and taken on the worst of all of our thoughts, beliefs and fears around being enslaved, imprisoned, limited, and controlled.  Yet I actually began to imagine and wonder, what if Money is Love? What becomes possible then?  For me?  For the world? For everyone wherever they live?  Whatever their external circumstances? 

What if Money truly is Love -- just like all of us?

And this is the question that then led to the impulse, invitation, command to talk a journey with Money.  What if through journeying together, one step after another, we can both come back and reconnect with our roots, and align with and embody the essence of who we are as Love, and experience each other as Love?  

What's possible then?

Solvitur Ambulando!